Health Alert

Hazardous asbestos fibers at the WTC exposed more than 110,000 people to the dangerous material; this includes 80,000 tower workers, 30,000 area residents and nearly 4,000 first responders. Asbestos exposure is directly linked to mesothelioma cancer and other asbestos-related diseases.

When the news broke that Osama Bin Laden was dead, at the Reuters Global Pictures Desk in Singapore all we could think was one thing: We have to see the picture of the dead body. The world needed the tangible proof of a genuine photo before we could really absorb the idea that the world’s most sought and also most elusive Islamic extremist was dead. We also knew that the news agency that was first in sending a picture of his dead body to the world would go a long way to winning this historic story. Sending out a fake picture could be very embarrassing to say the least – a tough balancing act when under such pressure.

A few hours later there it was circulating on the internet: Osama Bin Laden’s bloodied face in a video transmitted by a TV station in Pakistan. Under tremendous pressure we could get the picture and fed it into our picture editing system in preparation for transmission around the globe.